With the United States and Britain now in agreement to work for a “regime change” in Iraq, sharper attention is now paid to alternatives to President Saddam Hussein’s administration.
According to American and British sources the agreement was reached in principle during talks between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair during their weekend summit at Crawford, Texas.
Blair succeeded in exacting two important concessions from Bush.
First, the US will give the United Nations an opportunity to resume a “comprehensive and robust” weapons inspection in Iraq within a brief period. The process will start in May when the Security Council will formally demand that Baghdad allow the UN inspectors to resume work inside Iraq. The current consensus is that Baghdad will not agree. But even if it does, there is a strong possibility that the new mission will run into major hurdles within weeks, thus making military intervention inevitable.
The second concession won by Blair is an American undertaking not to try to impose any particular Iraqi opposition group as that country’s future government. This gives Britain diplomatic leeway to help organize as broad a coalition of Iraqi opposition groups as possible, notably including those close to Iran and Syria.
The current consensus is that the Iraqi opposition is too weak, too disorganized and too divided to play the kind of role that the Northern Alliance played in Afghanistan. “If we want regime change in Baghdad we have to go in ourselves,” says Kenneth Pollack, who advised President Bill Clinton on the Middle East. “I think we can finish the job in a month and then worry about the opposition.”
Richard Perle who chairs the Council of Defense Advisors expresses a similar view. “We must not be put off by the current weakness of the Iraqi opposition,” he says. “Once we have won the military campaign everyone will be on our side. In the Middle East people are always on the side of the winners.”
The British, however, are less optimistic. They insist that some kind of an alternative regime must be shaped, at least in broad terms, when and if military action starts. “This is important if only for our own public opinion,” says an advisor to Blair.” We cannot say we are marching into Iraq to create a power vacuum. We must be able to say that we are intervening in favor of Iraqi political forces that want to turn Iraq into a democracy based on human rights.”
That, however, is easier said than done.
The Iraqi exile opposition’s first show of force, designed to coincide with the Bush-Blair summit, came on Saturday in the form of a demonstration in central London. The march, which was watched by American and British political analysts, attracted almost 1,000 people. (Police said: 800.Organisers said: 3,000). Intended, as a show of unity, the march, unwittingly perhaps, revealed deep divisions. There were no partisan banners and slogans. But it was clear that the column of marchers had been divided in accordance with the political affiliations of the marchers.
The biggest contingent consisted of Shiites, especially those close to the Hizb Al-Daawah (The Party of the Call). There were men wearing the beards styled after Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Women, all dressed in black and wearing the Tehran-style “hijab”, were kept together in one section, with a suitable distance between them and the men.
In the back section of the march, one could see sympathizers of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), neatly dressed and clean-shaven, but without any women. In fact, the organizers had made it clear that women not wearing the black hijab would not be welcome. In one small section marched the supporters of the Iraqi National Accord, a middle-class outfit competing with the INC for attention. The Kurdish presence was limited to a few supporters of the Kurdish Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The Barzani and Talebani groups had sent a handful of people, mostly to see what was going on.
The slogans were confusing to say the least. There were 44 industrially made placards declaring Saddam Hussein to be a “criminal” and calling for him to be put on trial. But there were also eight placards showing Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon’s head behind prison bars. A few marchers carried portraits of President Bush, presumably for the benefit of American television cameras that failed to arrive. A few other marches carried photos of a wounded Palestinian baby.
Was this about Iraq or Palestine, some onlookers asked?
“The two are linked,” answered one organizer. “Both countries must be liberated. Sharon and Saddam Hussein are on the same side.” But it was clear that anti-Sharon slogans had been tacked to the main program just for good effect. Palestine is a theme that can always assure some sympathy.
At one point, a section of the march, consisting of young bearded men wearing battle fatigues, burst out into shouts of “Death to Israel, death to America!” The strange thing was that the slogans were in Persian, presumably for the benefit of the Iranian TV, which did arrive on the scene. A few minutes later, however, the shouters were advised to shout only in Arabic or English and to leave out the “Death to America” bit altogether.
At the very tail end of the march there was one lone Englishman wearing a Lenin-like goatee. He carried his own placard: “Bush and Blair are leading us to World War III”.
We asked him why he had come. “Someone told me there is a march against American and British intervention in Iraq,” he said. By the time the march had reached Piccadilly Circus the man had realized his mistake and decided to go another way.
As a picture of Iraq’s future, the march may not please Washington and London. There were absolutely no slogans about democracy and human rights. There were as many beards and black hijabs as in the Iranian city of Qom.
The only names shouted in praise were those of some Iraqi mullahs, dead or alive. It showed that, even in far-away London, the Iraqi opposition groups couldn’t really come together in spirit.
